Will Joss Whedon Assemble THE AVENGERS?
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Apr 13 2010, 4:04 PM
According to Deadline New York's Mike Fleming, Joss Whedon is in final negotiations with Marvel Studios to direct The Avengers. Poised to be the biggest film on Marvel's slate, Avengers would unite stars of the forthcoming Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America films, presumably alongside Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and other superheroes from Marvel's stable.
Not being a huge "Whedonite" myself, I still think it is a fine choice, and a good pairing of a director and material. He seems to have been able to juggle multiple ensembles well throughout his television series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. The only feature film on his resume is 2005's Serenity (itself a big-screen spin-off of Firefly), but like J.J. Abrams on last year's Star Trek, would make a big leap forward tackling an even bigger established franchise with lots of moving parts and special effects. Perhaps Whedon's biggest challenge on a project like The Avengers is finding a way to bring together Tony Stark's high-tech Iron Man with Asgard's favorite son, Thor, and Captain America, the World War II man out of time.
It will be interesting to see how Whedon (or any director coming into a situation like this) handles signing onto a project that is being fed by three other movies directly, only one of which that has actually been finished. Some of the big questions are how much he'll be able to develop a script that's been under construction for a few years, how much free reign he will be given by Marvel, and how many pictures he's signing up for. Iron Man director Jon Favreau is already onboard the project as Executive Producer, but will spend most of the next year working on Cowboys and Aliens for DreamWorks.
Personally, I was hoping (perhaps irrationally) to see Steven Soderbergh behind the lens for the ultimate superhero team-up movie. He has proven his ability to handle big, all-star casts well in the Ocean's series, and constantly plays in different genres; jumping from large-scale, foreign language epics (Che), to small movies shot digitally in a few weeks featuring a porn star (The Girlfriend Experience), to a farcical comedy with one of the biggest movie stars around (The Informant!), all in the span of a year. Soderbergh has shown he can shoot beautiful-looking movies, but had never really crossed off the "huge action tentpole" off my imaginary "To-Do" list.
The Avengers is rumored to begin filming early next year for a May 4, 2012 release.
According to Deadline New York's Mike Fleming, Joss Whedon is in final negotiations with Marvel Studios to direct The Avengers. Poised to be the biggest film on Marvel's slate, Avengers would unite stars of the forthcoming Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America films, presumably alongside Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and other superheroes from Marvel's stable.
Not being a huge "Whedonite" myself, I still think it is a fine choice, and a good pairing of a director and material. He seems to have been able to juggle multiple ensembles well throughout his television series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. The only feature film on his resume is 2005's Serenity (itself a big-screen spin-off of Firefly), but like J.J. Abrams on last year's Star Trek, would make a big leap forward tackling an even bigger established franchise with lots of moving parts and special effects. Perhaps Whedon's biggest challenge on a project like The Avengers is finding a way to bring together Tony Stark's high-tech Iron Man with Asgard's favorite son, Thor, and Captain America, the World War II man out of time.
It will be interesting to see how Whedon (or any director coming into a situation like this) handles signing onto a project that is being fed by three other movies directly, only one of which that has actually been finished. Some of the big questions are how much he'll be able to develop a script that's been under construction for a few years, how much free reign he will be given by Marvel, and how many pictures he's signing up for. Iron Man director Jon Favreau is already onboard the project as Executive Producer, but will spend most of the next year working on Cowboys and Aliens for DreamWorks.
Personally, I was hoping (perhaps irrationally) to see Steven Soderbergh behind the lens for the ultimate superhero team-up movie. He has proven his ability to handle big, all-star casts well in the Ocean's series, and constantly plays in different genres; jumping from large-scale, foreign language epics (Che), to small movies shot digitally in a few weeks featuring a porn star (The Girlfriend Experience), to a farcical comedy with one of the biggest movie stars around (The Informant!), all in the span of a year. Soderbergh has shown he can shoot beautiful-looking movies, but had never really crossed off the "huge action tentpole" off my imaginary "To-Do" list.
The Avengers is rumored to begin filming early next year for a May 4, 2012 release.
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